Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Jack Weinberger - February 6, 1983

Was there any medical care at all there?

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing, that's all, nothing. Nothing, it was strictly a death camp, over there.

Any sanitary facilities at all, I mean, any bathroom facilities or any place to wash or anything like that?

Wash, uh, you were taken out uh, again, I mean, this is, this is just hard to, to describe it. Here a person goes out to the car; the car is parked in front of, in front of your house. You go out early in the morning if it's cold to, you have to scrape the, the, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking in general, everybody. You have to--you put on a coat and a jacket and, and gloves. You have to scrape off a little snow and anytime you let the motor run to warm up the car. Or you go in the car and you have a nice warm car. You're afraid of a little cold here. But you're completely naked without clothes on, standing twenty-four hours a day in the snow without shoes on. Many drop dead, whoever survived had another day to live. I was there three or four days like that. How I survived and why I survived, I don't know. Maybe God wanted me or if there is a God, I don't know, maybe there's no God just luck, pure luck. There was going on, any time there was, people had no luck, they just survived. There was, they were using all kind of medals, all kind of methods. There are methods first from the beginning of the war to kill people, the Jewish people by shooting them. They took 'em to the pits, they shot 'em, and buried 'em. Then they came out with these gas trucks, I don't know if you've heard about 'em. They would put 'em in the truck with marked a red cross and they were gassed by the--on the way to the pit. Then they were using Auschwitz gas, gas chambers. They were using another method to kill people by their own starvation, they were putting gas in camps. By cold, by hunger, by thirst, by lice, I--there were times I could put in hand through my arm like this and pull out a hand of lice, and we used to eat 'em. Would you believe it? We were animals. [long pause] Even a time after the war these things happened. We are being--there are no Jewish people living in Poland now, there's no Jewish people. They are being blamed for the trouble in Poland. Tell me, who is doing it? Look even alone what happened just a few weeks ago, they threw a grenade in a synagogue. What--are we throwing grenades in a church? Show me one church we threw a grenade to kill people. In the entire Jewish history in Rome, or in Paris, or here, do we ever throw the grenades, or bombs, or in German and Austria they came in, in a synagogue they killed for no reason at all. Do we do that? But what really happened, that guy who tried to kill the Pope, a few--last year uh, supposedly if he was Jewish, what would've happened? Lucky he was not Jewish. I tell you, I don't feel sorry for the Pope, but I'm just saying lucky he wasn't Jewish, what would happen?